


leave me your stardust to remember you by

by rainingroses05



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Loneliness, Sacrifice Arcadia Bay Ending, rachel's really just mentioned but yeah, this is kinda just sad idk give chloe a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 14:32:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14499090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainingroses05/pseuds/rainingroses05
Summary: "Max doesn't leave her all at once."





	leave me your stardust to remember you by

**Author's Note:**

> title from "Boats and Birds" by Gregory and the Hawk.

            It’s sort of funny how everything is just how Max left it.

            Chloe’s wandering down the street and wondering why there hasn’t been some sort of shift in the earth, why the ground hasn’t buckled beneath them all and swallowed up buildings. It just feels like it should at least look a little different. Like the world should have the decency to acknowledge the fact that Max is gone and her dad is gone and nothing’s ever going to be the same.

            _You don’t have to worry about anything changing._ That’s what Max said, on the tape.

            It wasn’t true, no matter how much Chloe wanted it to be. But Arcadia Bay seems intent on keeping Max’s impossible promise for her.

Chloe scuffs her shoe against the sidewalk and tries not to see Max everywhere she goes. She figures if Arcadia Bay won’t acknowledge the change, she’ll have to do it herself.

            (She cuts her hair the next day. _You look so different_ , her mother says, and all she can think is, _thank god_.)

 

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

            Max doesn’t leave her all at once.

            (That’s how her dad left her. Suddenly, completely).

            Chloe can’t decide if this is a good thing or not. Every time Max texts her, she thinks, _We’re finally going to get the hang of this_. She keeps that up for a while, the on and off hope.

            Somewhere along the line she feels her slipping away. (Too late to catch, too late to forget, too late to hit the brakes.)

            And then she’s alone.

 

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

 

            Rachel is a momentary lapse in the loneliness.

            She comes into the picture in a flash and cloud of smoke, and Chloe feels like she’s really awake for the first time in a long time. She doesn’t think she’s ever needed someone so much.

            (Rachel reminds her of Max in a way, which is strange because they’re practically opposites. Maybe it’s how much she needs her).

            Rachel is loud music and bonfires on the beach and secret places. Rachel is her everything. Rachel is all she has.

            Chloe’s pretty sure she loves her, and that must be a curse because then she’s gone. She almost surprises herself with how long she holds onto the hope that Rachel will just turn up one day, smiling and glowing and laughing while she tells her about this great adventure she’s been on and how she’ll bring Chloe with her next time. Or maybe she’ll show up with darker stories. But she’ll come back. There’s no other option (at least not one Chloe can live with).

            Chloe smooths out the poster and pushes the pin through the top, securing it to the bulletin board. She’s not even supposed to be here, but there’s a chance that someone at Blackwell knows something about where Rachel is, so she has to be.

            She leaves the hallway as soon as students start to filter out of their classes. It’s a quick walk back to her truck because she doesn’t pause to look at anything that might make her think of Rachel, even though _not_ thinking of her is difficult when her face is now plastered everywhere.

            Chloe sits in her car and wonders what it would be like to just _leave_. There’s practically nothing left here for her. But, she thinks, what if Rachel comes back and finds her gone?

            (Rachel always said they’d leave together. Maybe that means something awful has happened to her. Or maybe people just shouldn’t make promises they can’t keep.)

 

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

            The first thing she thinks when she sees Max- before the anger, before the shock, before the confusion- is how much she’s missed her. Then, she wants to know what the hell she’s doing here, and why she didn’t tell her she was back, and why she’s been radio silent for all these years, but she’s never been able to stay mad at her.

            It’s just so _weird_ , Max sitting there in the passenger seat of her truck, somehow looking different and the same at once.

            “I would’ve contacted you,” Max says, and Chloe’s not sure if it’s true or not.

            None of this _fair_. That Max left. That she’s back without an excuse as to why she didn’t keep in touch, and Chloe’s _still_ on the verge of forgiving her for everything.

            (She thought she’d never see her again. She’d rather have her guilty, different, empty-handed than not at all.)

 

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

            Being back at the lighthouse with Max feels like a completely different universe. She’s talking to her like she almost never left- _almost_. This is the first time she gets the sense that there are bigger forces at work here, that the far-reaching hands of the universe have pushed the two of them back together.

She feels this even before Max tells her what really happened in the bathroom. How she saved her.   

            What’s that but fate?

            It’s fitting, really. Losing Max felt like it would kill her, and in some miracle, getting her back saved her. (If Max hadn’t come back, she’d be dead. One way or another.)

            Then the sky opens and snow spirals down through the sunshine because everything likes to fall apart just as it’s coming together again.

 

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

It isn’t long before they’re back on that hill again, this time in the pouring rain, watching everything they’ve ever known crumble. But Max is here and holding her hand, and it’s the two of them at the end of the world.

            When it’s over, when they’ve weathered the storm, cold and soaked to the bone, Chloe drives them out of town, watching the wreckage disappear behind them. She doesn’t know where she’s going, but it’s far, far from here.

            (Didn’t she always want to leave this place?

            Not like this.)

            Max sits in the passenger seat with the sun spilling over her tired face. She has dark hollows under her eyes like bruises, and she stares out the window without speaking.

            Chloe reaches for her hand. She’s all she has left to hold on to. Chloe’s chest aches with the realization. Max is here, but they’re both so alone.

            (The universe is so cruel and so sweet and so full of contradictions. Give and take.)

            They find a place to sleep for the night. Take refuge in each other like shaky storm cellars, clear away the cobwebs. Max’s body is warm and solid against her in the creaky motel bed, and when Chloe cries into the back of her neck, she doesn’t say a word. She turns and plucks the sorrows from her cheeks like she’s picking roses. Her hands are so, so soft.

             Max falls asleep with her fingers tangled into Chloe’s hair, and Chloe thinks about the impossible magnetism between them, how Max found her way back to her.

            If that’s not destiny, she doesn’t know what the word means.

 


End file.
